Play It Like You Mean It
by dirtymangoes
Summary: Set directly after Aizen's betrayal, Gin’s left behind and shinigami don’t deal well with traitors. The captains take their turns with him. Torture is the name of the game and Gin’s out to win.


**Gin – Play it like you mean it  
Rated: M  
**

The beam of negacion hasn't fallen on him. It takes them all a little while longer than it really should (disappointing) to catch on.

Gin is smiling when they realise this. Suddenly they're all springing in action. They're all jumping desperately on ship now; wholeheartedly trying to take him in by show of force, urgency etched in their bones.

Gin has his palms up, naked and in surrender. His blade is tucked safe and sheathed at his side and he's released Matsumoto; already let her go.

He watches Aizen and Tousen leave in blinding glory, and Gin's just smiling still. Smiling harder when he falls, eats dirt, pain sharp and familiar, hits the ground hard when several captains finally make their appearance.

They think they're like saviours, all self-sacrifice and valiant. They're a little too late. They've arrived like the gallantly weak and eternally foolish persons they are, deciding that this is the best method of handling him in the wake of having lost the most important player; the puppet master of this little show. Aizen.

Rangiku can only stare when they capture Gin. Can only watch when they lock him up.

Angels have fallen farther and harder than this. Infinity is overrated and mindless.

Gin doesn't really think about how many days it's been since they've locked him in this room. Such a small, empty, suffocating, stifling, worldless room.

He doesn't see anything beyond the black that colours pass his eyes. The pitch darkness that swallows him whole and spits him back out.

Gin's locked up like an animal, caged like a rat.

They have him trapped with ancient magic and powerful spells and guards upon guards that Gin's succinctly sure Soi Fong herself has trained.

They think it's enough. It's never enough.

The shinigami are all wary. They don't like to be taken as fools twice. They've barred him in, given him no contact, no food, no hope or light.

It suits Gin just fine. He always manages to have fun in the dark anyway.

When what seems like forever passes and all Gin's doing is smiling in the dark; like everything and nothing is funny to him. Laughing to himself like there's a secret joke in there that no one else but he can hear or understand beyond the lack of noise, that black void that's eating him alive.

He is a thin, pathetic, shell of what he once was. On a face so gaunt, it only makes Gin's smile all the more menacing.

They've finally decided how to deal with him. Gin isn't surprised. Or if he is, doesn't show it when his black world shifts to a hazy imitation of gray.

It is Kyoraku Shunsui who is Gin's first visitor since his imprisonment. Shunsui bears purpose. He brings warnings.

Gin doesn't look up when Shunsui begins his interrogation, feels his breath stop, Shunsui cutting off the air.

Gin's choking on nothing like he's drowning. But still, he isn't saying anything. It feels like days before he can breathe again. It feels like forever. And it probably must be just that – days – before he can.

Shunsui is just standing. Standing with Gin slumped against a gray wall, his white robe impossibly heavy against his thin form.

Shunsui is telling Gin things, saying things to get Gin to talk.

Gin never does. Gin doesn't break. Never says a word.

Shunsui leaves, frustrated.

It takes Gin a week to breathe right.

Hitsugaya is not as kind as Shunsui.

Hitsugaya is all silent condemnation, with a look that can freeze hell over in multitudes and does. Hitsugaya is sitting with his legs crossed across from Gin. His sword deep in stone.

He never does say anything, simply damns Gin's soul with looks alone.

Gin feels the temperature drop, the shackles on his wrists and ankles and neck weighing like the world and more, freezing.

Gin doesn't give anything away. Not even when his skin is cultivating flakes of ice, eyeballs arctic cold like they can drop, fingers freezing, and feeling like they will drop.

Maybe one even does. Gin isn't able to tell.

Hitsugaya lasts longer than Shunsui.

Hitsugaya hides the growl of irritation when Gin doesn't succumb, his time a waste. He pulls his blade out of the ground angrily, leaving, letting an icicle that's formed on the shallow ceiling fall and pin Gin's foot against the floor.

Gin's blood is red frosty splatters, proves he's alive, that he's survived. Cherry red freezes over the frozen ground, the wound hollow. An ironic hole.

Gin feels the cold set in, doesn't feel anything more than the numbness that's set in his bones.

Soi Fong would make Yoruichi proud, Gin thinks.

He has had little food, is thinner and slighter when Soi Fong's turn has come. She threatens him with words that lack indiscretion, lacking subtlety with language that's dangerously eloquent and creative for her. Language that ultimately falls on deaf ears.

She's saying things about poison and torture techniques that would leave both Urahara Kisuke and Shihouin Yoruichi proud. Is promising Gin by the time she's done with him, he'll wish she never even began.

Soi Fong's turn makes Gin green all over and his days with her pass again and again. Each slower than the last. His refuse is on the ground, the stink forever hanging in the air, the cuts on his body prone to the infections she has to offer, the poison burning him all over.

Gin doesn't crack.

Soi Fong lets the poison spread like a storm, like wildfire but much, much, more terrifyingly stinging. It's slipping, worming, blazing through his body before Soi Fong disgustedly shoves the antidote deep down Gin's throat, proving that they can't let Gin just die.

She leaves the room of nothing with nothing. Her leave serves only to prove that Gin's a tough nut to crack. One she couldn't even get open.

Gin throws up again when she's long gone, feels sicker than he's ever felt before.

Ukitake is shocking. Literally.

Gin's skin is on fire, his ears ringing, insides caught alight. He is scraping nails against the stone, unable to see, unable to hear, can't think, can't scream.

His heart is slamming against his ribcage like it's still there. Gin doesn't know.

Ukitake's trying to be kind, pauses in his torture, repeats his question, wants Gin to tell him what he knows.

Gin's gasping and clawing, is sagging against stone. The most he's shown since it all began. When Ukitake takes his chin, jerks it up in false tenderness. All Gin does is smile.

The shocks come back. Badder than ever.

When Unohana arrives. She reverses all the damage – as much as she is allowed to, as much as she can.

She fixes the hole in Gin's foot, filters the poison out of Gin's lungs that's been causing him issues with breath, cleanses his infections and cleans the burns all over Gin's body from his latest visitor.

Gin doesn't quite understand her agenda, can't catch the angle she's working from.

Unohana makes no expression when Gin smiles, his answer to everything now; life, living, the magic questions that everyone keeps asking. Unohana never does say anything, just cleans him up and departs.

She's probably the one who disturbs Gin the most.

Mayuri is transparent like water.

He's listing off the wonderful things he's going to do to Gin, has him on a table cold, the smile on his face simply magical and greed aligned.

Mayuri presses the scalpel cruelly into Gin's insides, cuts him nicely up. Presses harder when Gin's only reaction is to smile.

Mayuri keeps at cutting flesh off flesh. Gin is sure even, that Mayuri's rather tempted to just cut him all the way up.

Mayuri is unhappy that Gin's yet to scream.

He cracks Gin's eyes open, fishes himself an eye.

It doesn't do much but at least it gets Gin's mouth to open.

Byakuya is pristine silence. Doesn't need to talk if Gin doesn't.

Gin's notices, belatedly, they've switched his world to white. It's the only thing he can see with his one, good, eye. It's limitless and he can feel the slices more alive than ever on his skin, the cuts of Byakuya's unrivalled blossoms digging deep into the surgical cuts Mayuri's inflicted only days, weeks, months ago.

His kido is terrifying but nothing Gin can't take. Byakuya tries entrapment, pulls him into an illusion to see if he can pull the wool over Gin's eyes.

Byakuya can't. Gin's seen scarier. He's seen Aizen.

Byakuya settles for sending shocks through Gin's bony body instead. Shocking him two seconds at a time, then drowning him until all Gin has is liquid in his lungs and then he's being jolted alive.

It never ends. Even when the players switch, tagging out of the game.

Kenpachi isn't the cruelest one of all, but he comes close. His methods simple.

Cut, cut, cut, cut until they talk. Or cut their tongues up just for fun. Then just cut up some more. Kenpachi doesn't though. He can't cut up Gin's tongue no matter how much he wants to, would absolutely love to. He's not allowed to. Kenpachi has never been good with the rules.

So he does something else. He runs his fist through Gin's slack body.

Gin feels his arm go in but never come out. Gin feels more than winded, especially when Kenpachi, for some fun, reaches up and squeezes his heart inside his chest.

It takes Unohana, her lieutenant and ten others to get Gin's heart pumping again.

Gin can feel the hole in his stomach still. The scar that's left on pale skin his only souvenir, the reminder it was once there. Unohana's also returned his eye, now blind.

She's fixed him up again. Either it's enough or not, either way, Gin thinks nothing of it. Doesn't owe anyone anything. He rests his head against the cold stone until Komamura walks back in.

And it all starts back up again.

By the time Komamura's done, the first captain's next.

Relentless.

Gin's grows weary of this game. He tires easily.

Yamamoto tries to get everything out of Gin by mere spiritual force alone, trying to intimidate Gin into sweet salvation, his surrender.

Gin's bloody and beaten but still in one piece. He's sighing against the stone, can't work up the effort to smile Yamamoto into shutting up. It's all so boring now.

Yamamoto tries something else.

Then Gin starts laughing like there's something really funny about being physically interrogated by the one leader of the Gotei 13 whose mere presence alone has everyone quivering in fear, shaking in their boots.

If Yamamato ever wondered why Gin's laughing, he never gets the chance to ask.

Aizen runs him through the back with his blade, smiling as he blasts Yamamoto into nothingness, incinerates him for good measure, mostly for Gin's amusement.

Ash falls on the floor, falls as dust on Gin's stained robe. Gin still has the strength to look up, laughter dying in his throat.

Aizen's late.

His knight in shining armor cliché has taken his fine time.

Aizen is looking down on him, burns the shackles off of Gin, sets him free. Now unchained, Gin still feels their weight.

He rubs at his wrist, feels the lock on his magic lift.

Gin brushes at the ash on his robe when he stands, stumbles into full height. Aizen's smiling when Gin brushes back fine threads of white that have lengthened since the beginning of his imprisonment. Falls back down his shoulders like they belong there. Gin'll cut it all back out sometime.

He runs a broken hand through his hair, pushes it back, lets the light sink back in his eyes, one blind, and smiles.

II win.I

Aizen smiles at his little chess piece, having banked on Gin to win this little game.

Gin's won.

And unlike the rest, Gin's come out with his life, which is more than the others can say, their lifeless bodies merely black ashes in a limitless sea of white. Pawns in this game of life.


End file.
